The higher the mountain on which you stand, the less change in the prospect from year to year, from age to age. Above a certain height there is no change.

No people ever lived by cursing their fathers, however great a curse their fathers might have been to them.

The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever.

What wisdom, what warning can prevail against gladness? There is no law so strong that a little gladness may not transgress.

In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written while grass grew and water ran. It is no small recommendation when a book will stand the test of mere unobstructed sunshine and daylight.

As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top.

A man may acquire a taste for wine or brandy, and so lose his love for water, but should we not pity him.